Division and Disintegration
by apocafan
Summary: A massive nuclear attack on the United States changes the world and their relationship for Elliot and Darlene.
1. Chapter 1

**Note:** Spoilers for season three.

* * *

It was the end of the world.

Again.

 _Fuck,_ Elliot thought, rushing through his apartment. Flipper looked at him with a quizzical stare, as if the world wasn't falling apart outside of his apartment.

Maybe she had gotten used the sounds of public unrest. Elliot never did. He couldn't, knowing he had been ultimately responsible. When he saw the world unravel and stay unraveled, he didn't know what to do. It had been what he wanted, but he had been wrong.

So he set everything right again. He decrypted the data and waited for the world to fix itself. At least, as well as it could.

That night, after he pressed _enter_ , Elliot leaned back into his chair and sighed. Sometimes you could undo the things you have done, no matter how terrible.

 _Please be kind, rewind._

He wished he could rewind the decryption.

 _Fuck_ , Elliot thought again, feeling his heart racing.

Flipped whined then, and Elliot looked in her direction and felt as helpless as he ever did. More than when he was a child and had been at the mercy of his parents. More than when he had been at the mercy of Mr. Robot.

More than when Darlene had been at the mercy of Whiterose.

"Fuck!" Elliot shouted, grabbing the monitor of his computer and throwing it to the ground. It was useless now. Everything would be.

He heard a knock on his door, and for a moment, Elliot felt the weight of the dying world lift off his shoulders. He rushed to the door, throwing it open without even looking through the peephole.

 _"_ _Darlene-!"_ he began, expecting to see his sister on the other side.

But instead he came face-to-face with Mr. Robot.

His alter leaned in, resting his elbows on the door frame and sneered.

"This is why she let you do it," he said. "Decrypt the data. It was all part of her plan."

Elliot shook his head. "No. It's too risky. Her plans-"

But if Elliot were being honest, it made a sick sort of sense. Whiterose had wanted to move whatever was in that plant in Washington Township out of the country. He had assumed it was because she wanted it to stay secret. However, now it appeared as if part of her plan involved setting off a chain of nuclear missiles that hit over a dozen targets all across the country.

One of them had been Washington Township.

"We don't have much time," Elliot said, "I have to find Darlene."

Mr. Robot shook his head. "You don't even know where she was when the bombs went off. She could be anywhere. Even _there._ "

Of the fourteen bombs that had been detonated over the United States, one had been in the New York area. It was estimated that almost a hundred thousand were dead, and as radioactive fallout spread and the taxation on the local medical services became strained, it would be only a matter of time before the city descended into a sort of chaos even the worst soothsayers after five-nine couldn't have foreseen.

"No," Elliot said with a sense of finality. "She wouldn't go there if she could help it."

As soon as she was old enough to run away – when Elliot had graduated high school and left himself – she had left home too. Moved in with Angela's family. Traded a real brother for a pretend sister and a pretend father.

He had visited them once – Angela had seen him in the city while going to class and invited him to dinner. Darlene had been happy there.

Elliot remembered feeling bad about that and slipped out.

That was when he came face-to-face with his mother.

 _"_ _We pretend not to know each other,"_ Darlene had said, when she had arrived at the hospital with Angela and Angela's father. _"It's easier that way."_

But what had been easy had turned difficult for everyone. When Magda Alderson had seen Elliot, she had lost her grip on reality. She had been certain she had seen his father and made a scene. Elliot couldn't even remember what it had been, but the conclusion only resulted in Magda's involuntary hospitalization in a mental ward and Darlene taken away by the state.

Angela's father had gotten in trouble for taking Darlene in without the legal paperwork in order, as Elliot's mother had been collecting benefits for Darlene without her even being in the home.

If Elliot could have changed what happened, rewinded his own decisions, he wouldn't have let Darlene's safe and happy home be ruined by this moment. He didn't know what he would do, but he would have done it differently. After that, she hated her mother even more than she had before and drifted apart from Elliot entirely.

She ran away upstate, but because Elliot and Darlene didn't hack each other (at least not before the FBI got involved), he let it happen.

In the eight years before they reunited to hack Evil Corp, he saw her only a handful of times and only in passing when she had been in the city.

Elliot knew she remained close to Angela, and he knew from what Angela had said that Darlene thought of Angela's father fondly, but saw any happy home as a fiction she couldn't be a part of.

"But I don't know where to look," Elliot admitted. "I don't know Darlene as well as I used to."

He briefly thought of Kevin McCallister, of watching movies with his sister, of teaching her how to code so she could feel in control like he did.

But Darlene was more than that now.

A car crashed outside the apartment, somewhere down the street. The chaos was getting closer.

Mr. Robot gave a rattling sigh and walked into the apartment and shut the door behind him.

"Then we wait," he said. "She'll come to us."

The lights flickered and the world went dark, with Flipper letting out a small-bodied howl.

* * *

 **Author Notes**

This is a multi-chapter fan fiction that will be Elliot x Darlene, just because I ship them for some strange reason.

Chapters will be short, but hopefully frequent. I have an idea of where I'm going with this plotwise, and I think it will be around 20-40K words, or about 20-40 chapters like this one.

For those of you not aware, I have a trope: apocalypse. That doesn't mean this fan fiction is destined to be a tragedy, only that there are apocalyptic elements that I use to write with.

I hope you look forward to my next chapter!


	2. Chapter 2

There wasn't much time.

"I can't just stay here," Elliot said. He was standing in the darkness, seeing only the outline of Mr. Robot by the light peeking in through the window. "We need to get out of the city. It won't be safe."

Mr. Robot let out a laugh. "That's an understatement. Won't be easy, though."

Elliot looked around the apartment. He didn't know what he would need or even where to go. He had lived in a city his entire life. What was it someone took with them when the world was ending? _Really_ ending, not just financial accounts disappearing into the technical ether.

He didn't have much. Most New Yorkers didn't. But he grabbed his backpack and after dropping his laptop and a battery pack inside he stuffed it with all the snacks he had left in his apartment.

Flipper barked.

And dog food, though he realized it was a bit heavy. Still, he couldn't give her a bunch of human snacks. It was a reminder that he would need to find real food later.

Another car crashed outside his window. It could have been because the power was now out in the city, though he didn't really know why, or because people were getting anxious. The news had said that the nuclear fallout wouldn't drift towards New York, but out to sea.

Even so, there was no guarantee that Manhattan wouldn't be the next target – other big cities had been targeted, and while Elliot had a good idea why Washington Township had been targeted he knew that most assumed it was been a misfire.

Elliot slipped the backpack over his shoulders and scooped up Flipper.

"You can't just go out there like that," Mr. Robot said. "A man and a small dog? You're a target."

Mr. Robot walked over to the kitchenette and rifled through the drawers. He pulled out a single steak knife and frowned.

"This is the best you've got?" Mr. Robot shook his head, but walked over to the bed and tore off a section of cloth to wrap the blade. He handed it to Elliot, who pocketed it in his hoodie.

He turned back to look at his apartment, one last time, hoping that in a few days or weeks he could return and finish what he started.

But maybe that was the problem.

"To think, a few nights ago everything had been set right again," he said. Not everyone had been happy, the stock market had dipped a little, but Evil Corp had made an announcement that all debts would go through reconciliation through the courts in batches, instead of honored at once. Elliot knew it was because they did not want to give up E-Coin, but it was a promising start. "Now it's gone to shit."

Elliot and Mr. Robot walked out onto the street, and he looked both ways before crossing the street. Flipper wanted down, but Elliot didn't feel safe having her far from him, even on a leash. People were running up and down the street in preparation of a mass evacuation.

Traffic was congested, and even though people had grown used to driving due to the brown outs from before, the panic had set in.

He needed to find Darlene.

With Flipper in one arm and his phone in the next he kept dialing, hoping she would pick up.

But twenty minutes and three diner haunts later Elliot's anxiety got the best of him. New York was large, and Darlene could be anywhere. He didn't have enough time to cover all the ground he knew she _could_ be at, let alone all the places she went to he didn't even know about.

Elliot looked at his phone.

"Don't do it kid," Mr. Robot said. "You can't trust him. He'll betray you, like he did with that girl."

Elliot did his best to drown out his alter, and dialed the number he knew belonged to Fernando Vera.

It didn't even make it to the second ring before he heard the man's voice on the other line… as if he had been waiting for Elliot to call.

 _Because he was,_ he thought, addressing his imaginary friend. _Ever since he came back to the city and wanted to work together, he's been waiting for me to agree._

That night, when Elliot had pressed enter and leaned back in his chair with the weight of the world off his shoulders his earned peace did not last… because Darlene had come home with a _visitor._

He had gone to the door. He didn't look through the peephole like he usually did, because he recognized the pattern of knocks Darlene always gave and was eager to share with her what he had just done.

But when he opened the door and saw her standing there with Vera behind her, his heart wrenched.

 _Not again,_ he had thought, believing she was in trouble.

But that hadn't been the case. Vera had been waiting for Elliot's return to pledge his support, determining that he had been behind the fsociety hacks. It had bothered Elliot then that the only person not involved with the hacks who believed in Mobley and Trenton's innocence was the man who had killed his girlfriend.

Elliot had wanted to ignore Vera for the rest of his life… even considering tipping off the police about his location. But he didn't want a repeat of what happened to Shayla so soon after rescuing Darlene.

"I need your help," Elliot said into the phone. "I need you to find someone for me."

* * *

 **Author Notes**

Yes, this fan fiction is canon compliant with season three, which is why I included the spoiler warning since the first chapter.

Thanks for reading! I hope you look forward to the next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

Darlene sat alone on a pier that overlooked the ferries evacuating people out of New Jersey. The last she had heard, they had taken advantage of the winds and were pushing those fleeing from the radioactivity as far north as they could go, but she didn't know the details. She had stopped caring almost as soon as she realized what it all meant.

So she sat there, watching listlessly as people passed by on ferries going to who cared where. Behind her, the city of New York had descended into chaos.

 _Is this Elliot's fault too?_ She wondered, remembering the woman she had met the other night. She had been worried about her student loans which had been almost forgotten by the events of five/nine. _But it's my fault too then, isn't it?_

It was all too much.

She didn't even notice the anarchy building around her. Didn't notice when a strange man approached her and asked her name. She ignored him and put on her sunglasses. She thought he might have taken a picture. Perverted dick.

But what Darlene made sure not to do was look towards the southern sky, where remnants of the radioactive haze could be seen.

It wasn't that much longer until Elliot arrived. He sat next to her on the pier, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. Flipper twirled around and barked when she saw Darlene, and Darlene would have smiled if the world hadn't gotten worse since the last time they met.

"Why are you here?" he asked, "We need to leave."

Dalene bit her lip and looked towards him, but as soon as their gazes caught each other she looked down.

"I can't even believe this is happening. That Whiterose and the Dark Army would go this far. And we were stupid to think Whiterose would let us get away with reversing the hack."

Elliot took a deep breath. Flipper whined again, and Darlene reached out her hand. The small dog licked her fingers and nuzzled her palm to her tiny, dark face.

Darlene could see that Flipper was anxious – moreso than usual – but she still tried to act happy. If only Darlene could be a dog. Things would be so much easier and less complicated.

"It doesn't matter whose responsible now," Elliot replied. "It might not be over."

Darlene rolled her eyes. "Twelve nuclear attacks? Yeah, we're going to war."

"Fourteen," Elliot corrected. "The one in Arizona and San Diego must have been delayed. They went off an hour later."

Darlene cursed. "Shit. This is all so fucked up."

She cast a look behind her. The traffic was more congested than she had ever seen, and people were honking their horns wildly. It wouldn't be much longer before people started to attack each other… if they hadn't already.

"We need to go," Elliot said again, as if she didn't hear him the first time. "I got us a ride out of the city. I don't know where to go, yet, but-"

Darlene couldn't take her eyes off the ferries.

"Yesterday, after you decrypted everything, I went to check on Angela," she interrupted. "I thought it would make her feel better if I told her she helped. It was a lie, but what would it hurt? Only, she wasn't there."

Darlene peeked up at Elliot, whose posture suddenly went rigid.

"There you go, forgetting people again," Darlene said. "Well, I asked her neighbor where she went and he said that her father came looking for her."

Briefly, but only briefly, Darlene looked towards the southern sky.

"She's probably dead," Darlene said. "We killed her. We killed Angela."

Darlene could feel the panic rising, and her heart started to pound. This wasn't the time to have a panic attack. She pressed her hand against her chest and tried to calm herself.

She could feel Elliot's eyes on her. He always knew when she was losing it.

What Darlene needed to do was rest her worries and focus on something else, but she couldn't. It was coming up too fast, like a terrible sickness. But that's what anxiety and panic disorder did to a person. She was never truly okay. It was just scattered moments of agony interspersed with flutters of recovery that didn't last.

"All I can think about was when I lived with Angela and her dad after you left," she started. Elliot never liked it when she brought up this subject, and she knew this was when they started to grow apart. At least before the hack. But she couldn't help it. That was why she was _here_ , right now. "It must've been Easter – we never celebrated that at home – but I woke up and found this oversized basket of cheap candy. Angela and I ate so much we got sick. It wasn't until later that she told me her father had stopped doing that after her mother died. He did it just so I would feel at home."

She smiled, because it was all so ridiculous, thinking about it now. "We did it every year after that, until that dinner."

Darlene could see Elliot looking at her from the corner of her eyes.

"I don't blame you," she said. "I know you think I do. I just couldn't stay there after what happened. Having a normal home… it all felt so wrong."

But if Darlene was being honest, it wasn't just Angela and her father she was thinking about. She wondered if Elliot realized it or not yet, but their mother was still in that nursing home in Washington Township. Ground zero and blasted.

She deserved it, Darlene reminded herself. She had been an awful mother.

Even so, Darlene couldn't help but think about all the terrible things she did and whether or not that made her a bad person. Sure, she had done them _for good reasons_ , but whenever Darlene went to sleep at night, she saw Susan Jacobs.

Elliot didn't know about what she did to Susan Jacobs. What would he think?

Well, it's not like Darlene and Elliot didn't have blood on their hands already. Everything that happened was because they made the decision to hack E-Corp.

"If Angela and her father were there, we can't do anything about it now," Elliot said softly, but it was clearly eating away at him. "Maybe they weren't in New Jersey when the bombs hit."

But Darlene could tell by the expression on his face that he didn't believe that.

Her heart was beating furiously, and she wanted to cry. Maybe she was, and didn't know it. It was all so unfair.

Elliot wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him. He wasn't an affectionate person, and this would be all she would get from him, Darlene knew, but she leaned into him. Init 1, she thought, knowing she could at least rely on him when the world was going to shit.

"Let's go," Darlene said. "Wherever you want. Let's just leave."

And then she looked up, towards the radioactive sky and added: "Forever."

* * *

 **Author Notes**

Obviously Angela isn't dead. But Darlene wouldn't know that. However, for the purposes of this fan fiction I want them to think that.

I hope you look forward to the next chapter!


End file.
